Elimination is the name of the game at the Drew League

LOS ANGELES, CA-As it always does, the unpredictable hit the predictable right square in the mouth at the Drew League. Unfortunately, several of the favored teams forgot to hit back. Outside of the news that rapper The Game got into an in-game boxing match with his one of his teammates, the biggest news coming from Los Angeles Southwest College is the defeat of Christopher Baxter Division No. 1 BB4L in the first round of the playoffs.

On the heels of that shocker, the Jonathan Baxter Division No. 2 team-LAUNFD, which won the 2016 Drew League title, got handled by No. 5 No Shnacks on Saturday. No Schnacks then took out the No. 3 seed in Young Legends on Sunday. The Jonathan Baxter Division saw three of its top seeds get bumped out of the postseason this weekend (Birdie’s Revenge, LAUNFD, Young Legends).

That’s just the way things go down at the Drew League. Playing ball in the NBA doesn’t get you any brownie points towards playing into the championship game. Detroit Pistons star Stanley Johnson and his BB4L squad found that out against a mashed-up unit in Prodigy.

BB4L went down in flames Friday night at the hands of No. 8 Prodigy, a team that got reminded of its last-place seeding when it ran into DeMar DeRozan (32 points), Nick Young (28 points), and the Most Hated Players (MHP) in a Sunday afternoon matchup.

You can call it a lethargic outing or a bad case of taking things for granted as the top seed, but whatever the reason, BB4L simply played flat-footed against Prodigy, a team they should have mopped the floor with. Instead, it was BB4L that found itself being kicked around all over the court.

LAUNFD’s Stephan Branch blocks a shot attempt by a No Shnacks player during the first round playoffs in the Drew League on Saturday, Aug. 4, 2018. Photo by Dennis J. Freeman for News4usonline

Former USC Trojans star Jordan McLaughlin was partly responsible for that, going off from 3-point land like it was nobody’s business. At one point, Prodigy extended a lead over BB4L by as many as 24 points in the first half in the Drew League’s opening playoff game. Thoroughly embarrassed by its play in the first two quarters, it wasn’t until late in the third quarter that BB4L started to play the way it had played during the regular season.

BB4L made a monstrous push in the fourth period to get to the point where it was anybody’s game. Despite playing on their heels in the second half, Prodigy had enough energy to hold off Johnson and his BB4L teammates to advance to the second matchup against the Most Hated Players, where they got their reality card checked.

As for LAUNFD, even having Los Angeles Clippers power forward Montrezl Harrell in the lineup wasn’t enough for them to get axed from the postseason. LAUNFD basically duplicated BB4L’s first-round exit by getting into a deep hole in the first half before trying to make a run at salvaging its season with a second-half surge.

The results turned out to be the same. Just like BB4L, LAUNFD came up on the short end of the scoreboard and finds itself ousted from postseason play.